Mother-of-two Susan Tatum had had stomach problems for three weeks when she went to Tameside general hospital on 23 August 2010 after discovering blood in her underwear. The 56-year-old was accompanied by her husband of 36 years, David, after she called him at work and told him she was in a lot of pain.

A junior doctor who saw the 56-year-old thought she had a bowel blockage and passed her over to the surgical unit. "I could tell he was worried about her," said David, who accompanied her to the hospital. "This young surgeon came down and looked after her and said he thought she might have diverticulitis [a disease of the colon] or a urinary infection. We don't know where he got the [urinary infection] diagnosis from and he put that down as his first diagnosis on the forms."

An inquest would later find that the medical notes were unclear and misleading. One of the effects, said David, now 63, was it that it recorded his wife's pain as being much less intense than it actually was.

He said: "He [the junior surgical doctor] came to us and said: 'Don't worry, there's nothing really wrong. I think you've got diverticularis but you haven't got cancer. Don't worry about it, you'll be fine. I am going to give you some tablets and send you home'.'"

David went to collect the car to pick up his wife but when he got back she was being sick. The hospital told the inquest that it would have kept her in if it had known she was being sick but nursing staff who had given her a cardboard bowl to vomit into had not told doctors.

Additionally, when the couple got home they realised the junior surgical doctor had given Susan an antibiotic she had already told a previous doctor she was allergic to. Her husband went back to the hospital and saw the junior doctor who first saw her wife. "He said: 'I put it in a sheet that she's allergic to this'," said David. "He looked at her notes [by the surgeon] and her notes said she'd got a urinary infection so he gave her a tablet for urinary infection."

He continued: "She was poorly most of the night, in pain, but we'd been told everything would be alright … I kept going up to see her and she weren't better but she didn't look particularly unwell. At about 2am in the morning I was getting ready for bed, I went into the bedroom and she was dead. Within six to eight hours of leaving hospital, she died."

He said that it was only when he was told the cause of death, peritonitis, inflammation of the layer of tissue that lines the inside of the abdomen, that he questioned her treatment, instructing solicitors Irwin Mitchell to act on his behalf. "You shouldn't die from peritonitis," he said.

At the 2012 inquest into Susan Tatum's death, Stockport coroner, John Pollard, concluded that the "acts and omissions" of staff at the hospital meant she was not given any effective treatment for her condition and did not undergo investigations and surgery which would have been likely to save her life.

"To some extent you never really get over it," her husband said. "I think an apology would be nice. They [the hospital] have sort of apologised through the newspapers – 'We feel sorry for her family' – but they've never said sorry to me."